Trainers, if you restart your Pokemon GO game, you will likely be prompted to acknowledge and agree with a newly updated Pokemon GO Privacy Policy. This is not a mistake, as Niantic has added the following two sections into the Privacy Policy:
We will only use your Personal Data to do the following if we have your consent:
- If you elect to turn on background activity tracking in our Services (for example the Fitness Mode in Pokémon GO) we will collect your Personal Data as you use the Services as well as in the background when you do not have the Services open on your device. This includes your device location and your fitness activity data (such as Step Count, Calories Burned, and Distance Walked). We use background activity tracking to provide you certain functionalities in the Services such as in-game items and rewards tied to your fitness activity level and alerts for nearby gameplay events. You can change your mind and turn off background activity tracking at any time in your device settings or in-app settings.
- With your permission we use your device’s health app (Apple HealthKit if you use an Apple device, or Google Fit if you use an Android device) to collect your fitness activity data: we read and/or write your fitness activity data to your device’s health app to operate background activity tracking and to ensure you get “credit” in your device’s health app for all of the walking you do while playing our games. We do not use data collected through Apple Health Kit or through Google Fit for marketing or advertising purposes. Our Services cannot read from or write to your device’s health app without your consent. You can change your mind and disable our access to any type of fitness activity data at any time in your Apple Health or Google Fit app settings on your device.
There are also signs that a deeper Facebook integration is on it’s way:
- If you elect to enable the Facebook User Friends permission available in some of our games, we will import from your linked Facebook account the list of your friends who also play the game and enabled Facebook User Friends. If you enable that permission, your Facebook profile picture and the name on your Facebook account will be visible to your friends in-game. You can change your mind and unfriend other players at any time from your in-app Friends settings. You can also revoke Facebook permissions for our games directly from your Facebook account settings.
We’ll update you accordingly as we gather more information on this – especially the Facebook integration feature.
